Wakanda, the advanced fictional East African nation in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther film, is the the Black utopia imagined by the African diaspora and its allies since the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And Black Panther is the powerful, intelligent and compassionate Black superhero whose time has arrived.

Like political campaign contributions, today’s self-interested foreign aid often supports badly-designed development projects, imposes foreign investor-friendly policies on recipient countries, facilitates access to intended beneficiaries’ resources, helps aid-giving countries to look good on the world stage, all the while making unquestioning taxpayers in aid giving countries feel good about their supposed generosity.

Last week’s decision by an all-white jury to acquit Gerald Stanley, the killer of Colten Boushie, a young Indigenous man from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, calls for an overhaul of Canada’s settler-based legal system, and an investigation into the racism embedded within Canadian society and police forces.

The Tax Justice Network’s 2018 Financial Secrecy Index says Canada’s financial system is less transparent than that of notorious tax havens and countries often portrayed as corrupt by the mainstream media, such as China, Russia and Kenya. That makes Canada one of the key facilitators of illicit financial flaws, global financial crimes. and increasing global inequality.

While many Canadians often associate the continuing rise in white supremacist hate in Canada to US President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric, the right-wing extremist movement was already “alive and well” in Canada, “with more than 100 active groups and well over 100 reported incidents of right-wing extremist violence in the country between 1980 and 2015.”

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his team at the Freedom of the Press Foundation have created Haven, a free and open source personal security system for journalists and human rights defenders. The app transforms your cheap second Android phone into a device capable of capturing and reporting intrusions to your physical space and possessions.

BC’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) withheld information confirming that fossil fuel industry fracking operations could contaminate surface waters and groundwater sources, and absolved companies of the responsibility to act responsibly. A public inquiry into fracking in BC must be instituted as soon as possible.